Present to 14 iPads Simultaneously with Idea Flight

If you have an opportunity to share a presentation with a group of people equipped with their own iPads, consider using the application “Idea Flight” instead of a projector and screen. Idea Flight is a free app for your audience members (up to 14 “passengers”) to view slides YOU share and control as the “pilot.” An in-app upgrade ($7.99) is required only for the “pilot” of the presentation. Use a free, online tool like DropBox to transfer a PDF version of your presentation to your iPad, then share it over wifi with your audience members. You can invite them to the press and share the download link to “Idea Flight” via email. If you want to share a presentation with a group of students using iPads from a shared “cart,” this could work well assuming your wifi network is configured to permit the required port access the app uses. The following 90 second video shows how it works.

Since Idea Flight just supports presentations from PDF files currently, embedded videos can’t be used. Still, it’s a great step forward for synchronous presentations. I like how you can “lock” passenger iPad screens during the presentation if desired, but then “unlock” them afterwards so they can freely browse your slide deck. I also like how “passengers” can login with their existing LinkedIn accounts and then share contact info / network with each other during and following the presentation. Obviously that feature was designed more with business folks in mind than students in the classroom. Perhaps they’ll add other collaboration login options (like Twitter or Facebook) down the road.

Have you used Idea Flight yet for a “live” presentation shared with other iPad users? If so, how did it go and what do you think of the app? It does support sharing over Bluetooth also, but audience size is limited to just three folks. Wifi supports 14 audience members so it’s likely the best option for the classroom.

There’s a similar app that allows you to become the presenter for free.. It’s called Anywhere Pad.

http://www.speedofcreativity.org Wesley Fryer

Thanks for sharing Anywhere Pad, it looks good and in some ways more powerful than Idea Flight, since you can have meetings with people in different places using it. There is not pricing available on the website currently for Enterprise users, and I’m not entirely clear on the difference between “document access” (which is free) and “document sharing” which requires a paid account.